Conventional contact centers, which are examples of a point-of-contact (POC) for a customer seeking assistance for a product or service, generally rely on traditional communication systems connected by the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to interact with customers. Interaction between customers seeking assistance and customer support agents is often limited to communications over standard telephone connections. Thus, customers without access to a telephone connection or desiring multimedia interaction are not accommodated.
More recently, multimedia contact centers that support both systems connected by the PSTN and systems connected by a network of computers, such as the Internet, have been proposed. A customer support agent at a multimedia contact center is generally provided with equipment that supports both telephone-based and computer network-based communications. For example, an agent's workspace may be provided with a telephone connected to a private branch exchange (PBX) that receives customer support requests via the PSTN, and a computer connected to a server that receives customer support requests via the Internet. In this example, the agent can provide support over either the telephone or the computer. However, since an agent is generally only able to provide support to one customer at a time, a problem arises when the agent receives simultaneous customer support requests over both telephone and computer. In this example, the agent cannot provide support to both customers, leaving one customer unsatisfied.
Consequently, there is a need for a system and method that supports blended PSTN and computer network, e.g., Internet, customer support interactions while alleviating agent workflow complications. Moreover, there is a need for a system and method that supports blended PSTN and computer network customer support interactions with intelligent routing of customer support requests to available agents.